


Promises

by kirani



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jack Dies, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, M/M, Neglect, POV Kent Parson, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Therapy, Time Skips, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, parse positive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:34:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15435147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirani/pseuds/kirani
Summary: Jack Zimmermann overdoses the night before the NHL draft. He doesn't survive. Kent Parson doesn't deal with it very well, until he does.





	Promises

**Author's Note:**

> TW Suicide  
> This is a fic about Jack Zimmermann dying by overdose at 18. I know this is super morbid (and let's not think about poor Bitty, okay?) but I really wanted to explore how Kent would deal with Jack's death, since we know he doesn't have healthy coping mechanisms.

He doesn’t leave a note.

Kent knows because he tears apart their hotel room after the paramedics leave. He unlocks Jack’s phone and tears through everything there, too.

Nothing.

Jack left him and he didn’t even leave a note.

~

The next day, he goes first in the draft, but he can’t even bring himself to smile as his new jersey is pulled over his head. He knows his eyes are red and he knows everyone knows why.

Except they don’t. Not really.

~

Alicia Zimmermann sees him arrive at the funeral and she pulls him out of the line, holding him close and crying into his shoulder. She keeps him with them as people stream in, paying their respects to Jack’s parents and his best friend.

~

It’s his turn to dump earth on top of Jack’s casket, and his eyes refill with tears.

“You promised,” he whispers to the casket.

He throws in the dirt and moves to stand with Alicia and Bob again.

Alicia is still crying, clutching a handkerchief.

Bob pulls Kent into his side with a large arm as Kent continues to cry quietly.

~

Kent moves into his new Las Vegas apartment and the first thing he unpacks is a framed photo of him and Jack, arms around each other and matching grins.

~

He drinks.

Mostly he drinks alone.

Sometimes he drinks at clubs, sunglasses and a backwards snapback shielding him, losing himself in the rhythm of the music.

A few men catch his eye; they invite him places, invite him to do things.

He smiles and follows them. It feels like cheating.

~

His teammates are careful with him.

He hasn’t cried during practice but he knows how often it still looks like he was up all night crying.

Swoops glares at some of the guys once, an aborted sentence that Kent thinks might have been directed at him.

He wasn’t really paying attention.

~

It isn’t fair.

He mourns Jack privately, because to mourn him publicly would share what he isn’t ready to share.

~

“How are you, Kenny?” Alicia asks as she pulls him into a tight hug.

They’ve come down for his first game in the NHL and to see his apartment.

He’s still waiting to fuck it all up.

“I miss him,” he says into her shoulder.

“I know, honey,” Alicia whispers back. “We all miss him.”

“He was my b—“ Kent starts. “My b—“ but he can’t quite say it aloud. They never did, after all.

“I know, honey,” Alicia says. “He loved you, too.”

Kent pulls back and studies her face.

Her eyes are wet with tears and she gives him a small nod.

Kent loses control and sobs.

Alicia holds him and he feels less alone.

~

He scores his first goal in the second period of his first preseason game. He skates into the celly with a glance up and a finger pointing to the sky.

“That’s for you, Jack,” he mouths.

~

He goes home for Christmas but his mother scowls when he’s less than his usual vibrant self and screams at him when she finds him drunk. She doesn’t ask about Jack. She doesn’t even ask about hockey.

He vows never to go home again.

~

Despite it all, he plays well. He plays so well, he gets the Calder.

“I have a few people I want to thank. My mom for signing me up for hockey as a kid. My coaches and my team for helping me play the best hockey I’ve ever played best this year,” Kent pauses, because that was debatable. The best hockey of his life will always be with Jack. “Bob and Alicia Zimmermann, for believing in me and supporting me through this rough year.” He sees Alicia tear up in the audience, smiling up at him. “And Jack. Wherever you are, I love you, man, and I wouldn’t be here without you.”

The audience applauds but Kent can hear the whispers that follow him back to his table.

~

There were already rumors about him and Jack but his Calder speech ignites them with a new fervor.

His mother calls him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she scolds. “You’re going to fuck everything up just when it’s started!”

Kent hangs up on her.

He never told her, but she knows.

He calls Alicia.

“Kenny, honey, what’s wrong?” she asks as soon as they’ve greeted each other.

“My mom called,” Kent says.

“If she had anything to say besides she’s proud of you, I want you to ignore it,” Alicia says, her voice firm.

“She didn’t get there before I hung up on her.”

“You are a wonderful, amazing, and sweet young man, Kent Parson,” Alicia continues. “I want you to listen to me. I am so, so, _so_ proud of you.”

Kent can’t hold in a small sob.

“I am,” she continues. “I am proud of you and I am proud to call you my son. And you are always welcome here.”

“Thanks, Alicia,” Kent says after he swallows down his sobbing.

“Any time, honey.”

~

He spends the summer with the Zimmermanns. They welcome him into their home like a son, as promised.

It still feels empty.

The three of them move around each other gingerly, never quite feeling quite comfortable without Jack there, too.

~

He trains until he can’t move.

He still cries at night.

~

He pours himself a measure of scotch when he gets back to his empty apartment in Vegas for Aces training. He drinks until he can’t feel anymore. He keeps drinking until he’s crying, shouting at the framed photo of Jack on the entertainment center.

“You promised! You promised you had it under control! That you wouldn’t take too many! You promised you wouldn’t leave me!”

He smashes his glass against the wall and falls to the couch.

“You promised,” he whispers to the ceiling before he passes out.

~

Alicia had gently insisted he get a therapist most of the summer and he gives in when he gets back to Vegas. If only to make Alicia happy. He can give her this.

Even if he couldn’t save Jack.

~

His therapist is nice.

He spends most of the first session crying. He manages to get out that his best friend had died the previous summer, but when she asks how he was dealing with it, he burst into tears.

Through the tears, he manages to get out that it was more than that. He had loved Jack. He thinks Jack loved him back.

And he left him.

~

He begins to really get to know the guys. He goes out with them but always cuts himself off after a couple of drinks. He knows he’ll cry if he gets drunk.

Swoops seems to still be not-so-secretly looking out for him and he finds he’s sort of grateful.

He’d rather be not be an emotional wreck with a dead best-friend-slash-secret-boyfriend, but baring that, he’s happy he has Swoops looking out for him.

~

By the end of his second season he’s very nearly processing his feelings.

Nearly.

He’s beginning to accept that it wasn’t his fault that Jack died that night, that he was a child and it was not his responsibility to know what Jack wasn’t telling him. Though he still thinks if he had told Bob and Alicia things would have turned out different. The night wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

He takes it out in his hockey, building on his reputation as the fastest in the league and becoming also one of the dirtiest.

Jack would be ashamed.

~

He tries to make Jack proud in other ways. The Aces are a young team and they respond well to any amount of pep talk, even from a 19 year old who spent his rookie year crying every night. Kent steps into the role with ease.

At night, he tells Jack about it.

~

He thinks Jack is proud when he gets the A at the end of his second season.

Alicia and Bob definitely are.

His own mother doesn’t even call and Kent is a little bit relieved.

~

He goes to therapy. He plays damn good hockey. He mostly stops drinking. He gets the C halfway through his third season on the Aces. He even decides he wants to start dating.

He’s stopped hooking up with random guys in clubs, but he also isn’t sure he wants to try online dating, seeing as he’s a closeted professional athlete. But he’s 21 and he hasn’t dated anyone since he was 17 so he doesn’t really know what to do. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t even know another single gay man.

He decides to ask Swoops to set him up.

This of course requires him to come out to Swoops.

“I know,” Swoops says.

“You _knew_?” Kent asks, his mouth gaping. “Since when?”

“Parse,” Swoops starts, then shakes his head. “For a while, okay? That’s all that matters. You know the whole team supports you, right?”

“This is a Zimms thing, isn’t it?”

Swoops looks like he’s about to deny it but then he closes his mouth and nods.

“You were... really messed up, bro,” he says after a moment of consideration.

“He was my best friend,” Kent counters. “He killed himself _in my bathroom_.”

“Still,” Swoops says. “There was something else, wasn’t there?”

Kent thinks about denying it but he can’t anymore.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “There was.”

Swoops nods.

“Also, way too many of us have seen you sneak off with guys in clubs,” Swoops says with a laugh. “You’re not really good at being discrete, y’know.”

“So, what, you just decided to let me make a fool of myself?” Kent feels his temper start to rise.

“No, man, we were supporting you and letting you come out in your own time,” Swoops defends quickly. “But we had to keep you from getting papped and outed before you were ready.”

“Oh God, that’s what Parse Duty was for the first couple years, wasn’t it?”

Swoops nods knowingly.

“So half the league knows, is what you’re saying.”

Swoops nods again. “Probably.”

Kent groans into his hands.

~

The good news about half the league knowing that Kent was gay was that he suddenly had a lot of dates. Once Swoops let the NHL grapevine know that Kent was ready to date, he had a flurry of offers to set him up with friends.

He hits it off with a few of them but they always seem to peter out after a few dates.

His therapist is proud of him.

He’s stopped apologizing to Jack in his head.

~

Nothing really feels right until he gets a text from an unknown number about another date. It’s from the goalie on the Providence Falconers, a guy they call Snowy. They arrange a time and place after Snowy assures him that his friend is cool.

The date is a couple of weeks later so Snowy can introduce them when he’s in Vegas for a game.

They arrange to meet the morning after the match for brunch, then Snowy will conveniently be called away, leaving them to their date. It’s a good arrangement and one he’s made with several of the guys.

What he doesn’t expect, is to walk into the café to find two Falconers in the booth waiting for him. He freezes, afraid of an ambush. Because next to Snowy is Alexei Mashkov.

Kent freezes in place. He considers turning around and leaving. But Snowy sees him and waves him over.

Kent fakes a nonchalance he doesn’t feel and approaches the table.

Snowy introduces Alexei as Tater and Kent tries not to laugh, though from the crinkle in the corner of Alexei’s eyes he hasn’t succeeded. After they’ve each finished half a beer but before they’ve ordered food, Snowy’s phone mysteriously rings and he makes his excuses.

In the silence that follows, Tater smiles at Kent and Kent returns it, nervously.

“So, Tater,” Kent begins.

“You are calling me Alexei,” he says with a smile.

“Alexei,” Kent smiles. “I didn’t know it would be... you?”

Alexei smiles wider. “Is good surprise?”

Kent swallows and his eyes betray him by flicking down to Alexei’s lips.

He’s rewarded with a deep chuckle.

“It’s great.”

~

The next several months are a flurry of dates in various locales in New England and Vegas.

Kent finds himself smiling at his phone in the locker room and getting chirped to hell.

He also finds that he doesn’t care.

~

After the playoffs end too soon for both the Falconers and the Aces, Kent decides to tell him about Jack.

All of it.

Alexei sits patiently and listens to Kent talk, until Kent starts to cry. Alexei reaches forward and folds him into a hug. He finishes telling the story from the safety of Alexei’s arms.

~

“Come home with me,” Kent says one afternoon as they cuddle on his couch.

“We are home, Kenny,” Alexei says, not looking up from his book.

“To Montreal,” Kent clarifies.

Alexei closes the book and studies Kent’s face.

“Montreal is home? You are coming from New York, no?”

“Montreal is home,” Kent insists. “Bob and Alicia are home. And I want you to meet them.”

“Okay, Kenny,” Alexei smiles.

~

“Kenny, honey,” Alicia folds him into a hug when they pick him up at the airport. “And you must be Alexei,” Alicia moves smoothly to hug him.

“Is very nice to be meeting you, Mrs. Zimmermann,” Alexei says.

“Please call me Alicia.”

Kent and Bob exchange a hug as well, then Alexei reaches out a hand to shake.

“Is very nice to be meeting you, too, Mr. Zimmermann.”

“Call me Bob,” he says, grasping Alexei’s hand and pulling him into a hug.

~

At their home that evening, Alexei and Kent volunteer to wash dishes, but Alicia takes Alexei’s place and shepherds Kent into the kitchen.

“Oh no,” Kent says once he realizes what’s happening. “Please tell me Bob isn’t giving him the shovel talk.”

“You know how Bob is,” is all Alicia says, a smile playing on her lips.

~

That night, Alexei seems more excited than threatened to have been given the shovel talk from Bad Bob Zimmermann. Kent is laughing his ass off.

“He say I cannot hurt you,” he says. “I am making promises. But is not bad way to go, Bob Zimmermann to be beating me up.”

Kent punches him in the arm and laughs.

“Kent,” Alexei says, suddenly serious. “I am promising. I am never hurting you, Kenny.”

“I promise, too, Alyosha. I will never hurt you.”

They seal it with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes Kent is a fuck up in many ways but I love him and he's my baby. I'm on tumblr at willdexpoindexter.


End file.
